It’s that time of year, and Bolton Valley started their lift-served ski season yesterday, so I headed up this afternoon for a few runs off the lifts to check out the conditions and get some exercise. It’s becoming a bit hard to keep track of the snow that’s falling because it’s nearly continuous with all these bread-and-butter systems passing through the area, but the resort is reporting 14 inches of new snow in the past 48 hours.
They have a very interesting assortment of lifts and trails available right now that is atypical of what they usually have going at the start of the season. The Snowflake Chair isn’t running, and Sherman’s Pass isn’t open, and those are often early season staples. Instead, the Wilderness Chair is running, and they appear to have the entirety of the Wilderness terrain open on natural snow. With neither Sherman’s Pass nor Bear Run open, there’s no beginner terrain currently being served off the Vista Quad or the Mid Mountain Chair, so the only beginner terrain is off the Mighty Mite. On top of that, the only way down from the Vista Summit is Hard Luck, which is a steep black diamond run. It is indeed a very unusual collection of early season terrain.
I decided to sample all the lifts that were available during my session, and I started with a Beech Seal run off the Mid Mountain Chair. The skier’s left side had manmade snow, and the skier’s right was natural snow, and the quality of the ski surfaces was of course night and day. The right side was a little thin in a few spots, but the snow quality was excellent since it’s entirely natural snow that has never undergone a thaw-freeze cycle. I next headed to the Vista Quad, and conditions on Hard Luck were disastrous. Coverage was fantastic, but being all manmade snow, very steep, and the only way down from Vista such that it got all the skier traffic, the quality of the snow was horrible. I’m sure racers would love it, but that’s about it. I watched multiple people try to turn and simply kick out, fall, and begin to slide down the slope because there’s just nothing to hold onto with your skis. Thankfully, about halfway down you can cut over to the Show Off trail, which is currently all natural snow. The coverage is a little thin in spots, but easily manageable and all the snow there was excellent packed powder.
There was lots of snowmaking going on with temperatures in the 20s F, so I’m sure they’ll be opening more of the traditional early season terrain soon.
